It's a bit sad to see the continued fall of the old kings of mobile with Palm out of the game and RIM struggling to find its place in the modern era of smartphones. There was some excitement yesterday when rumors floated that Samsung was looking to buy RIM, but Samsung quickly announced there was no truth to the rumor. Peter Rojas started a discussion on GDGT stating that RIM should abandon BB OS 10 and adopt Android or Windows Phone.

RIM was present at CES 2012 last week, but was just promoting apps on their devices and most of them just cannot compete with what we see on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. They have stated that BB OS 10 will be coming at the end of 2012 to new hardware, but you have to wonder if they can stay competitive all year with existing hardware as the mobile space continues forward at a fast pace.

As Peter points out, even though Windows Phone is a stable, fast modern smartphone platform with over 50,000 apps it still can't seem to gain much traction in the marketplace as iOS and Android dominate the wireless carriers. webOS was also a very nice smartphone OS and it failed. RIM needs more than just a possible new OS coming in about a year to stay in the game.

What do you think of Peter's thoughts and proposed options for RIM to succeed? I tend to agree with him that it is likely they will stick to their guns and continue down the current path.

Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 200 d...
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Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadgeteer at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Swappa to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as &#8220;long term loaner units&#8221 this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.